The WHFoods Menu is a menu designed to help guide you to a healthier way of eating with nutrient-rich World's Healthiest Foods and great tasting recipes which provide 100% of the WHFoods' nutrient recommendations. Yes, you heard that correctly— 100% of all nutrient recommendations at WHFoods with recipes so easy that anyone can make them! And none of which take longer than 15 minutes to prepare. You get all of these benefits without reliance on dietary supplements or processed ingredients.

WHFoods Menu Highlights

meets 100% of all WHFoods nutrient recommendations*

no dietary supplements required

high in fiber, with over 3 times the U.S. average

only 1,800 calories, nearly 300 less than the U.S. average

only 13 grams of saturated fat, about half of the U.S. average

vegetable-focused with about 5 vegetable servings

rich in omega-3 fats

*The World's Healthiest Foods Standard for nutrient intake combines recommendations from the Dietary References Intakes (DRIs) established by the National Academy of Sciences and the Daily Values (DVs) established by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. It establishes a single recommendation for each nutrient that best fit the needs of men and women 31-70 in the U.S. For more detail, see Our Food and Recipe Rating System

The Role of Diet and Nutrition in U.S. Health Problems

After teaming up and analyzing the role of diet in our national health status, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) concluded in a landmark 2015 report that the way we eat in the U.S. constitutes a major health concern. We get far too little of certain nutrients that we need, and far too many of certain nutrients that we don't. As a result, 96% of the people have levels of nutrient deficiency, which can increase our risk of many commonly experienced chronic diseases, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, certain cancers, osteoporosis, stroke, and others. Poor food choices and malnutrition are seldom the single-handed cause of any chronic disease. But they very frequently raise our risk! And changing the way we eat can help move things back in the opposite direction, away from chronic disease. As a very general conclusion based on a large number of research studies, healthier eating has been shown to lower our risk of many chronic diseases in the range of 10-30%. (In a case like obesity, of course, this percentage is much higher.)

There are also many circumstances in which we might not be able to completely avoid a chronic health problem, but this problem can be much more manageable and less intrusive in our everyday lives through healthier eating. Inflammation-related health problems are a great example in this area, since a wide range of dietary factors can influence the level of inflammation in our body systems and, depending on the specific set of circumstances, intake of nutrients like flavonoids can significantly lessen the degree of inflammation.

Missing Nutrients Provided by Our WHFoods Menu

If you compare average dietary intake in the U.S. to our WHFoods nutrient recommendations, you will find current U.S. intake falling short of the mark in about half of all nutrient areas! These areas of nutrient deficiency include vitamin A, vitamin D, vitamin E, fiber, folate, choline, iron, magnesium, and potassium. And while average U.S. intake meets our WHFoods nutrient recommendations in many other nutrient areas, it only succeeds in meeting our recommendations by going overboard in other areas. For example, average dietary intake in the U.S. easily meets (and actually exceeds) our recommendations for vitamin B12 and protein - but only at the expense of too much saturated fat and calories, often stemming from overconsumption of low-quality and/or processed foods. We keep the calories in our WHFoods Menu to about 1,800. The U.S. average is closer to 2,100, or about 16% higher. We also keep the saturated fat in our WHFoods Menu on the low side, to about 18 grams. The U.S. average is about one and a half times that at 25.5 grams. So not only are there key nutrient deficiencies in our U.S. way of eating, but also key excesses. Our WHFoods Menu corrects both problems!

Why Whole Foods Should Be Your Go-To Source For Nutrients

We live in a time when smoothies, protein bars, protein powders, dietary supplements, and other nutrition-related products have become prominent not only in marketplace ads but in many of our meal plans. And yet no matter how concentrated these products might be in certain nutrients, they cannot reproduce the diversity of nutrients, the variety of nutrient forms, or the complexity of nutrient interrelationships found in whole foods. Research studies repeatedly show that every food has its own unique combination of nutrients, and that no processed version can create an exact replica of the real thing. Whether it is the unique lignan composition of cucumbers (including lariciresinol, pinoresinol, and secoisolariciresinol) or the 45 different flavonoids that scientists have identified in kale - real foods provide unique nutrient combinations that cannot be found anywhere else.

How Nutrient-Rich Foods Can Improve Your Health

The WHFoods Menu provides you with nourishment through a reliance on nutrient-rich foods. By "nutrient-rich," what we mean is concentrated in nutrients and costing as little as possible in terms of calories. Any of us could get 100% of many key nutrients from processed foods if we ate these processed foods in great excess. We would get the necessary nutrients, but we would also get too many calories and too many fats and we would end up overeating in a way that took a major toll on our body systems. Nutrient-rich foods, like the World's Healthiest Foods, give us the nutrients we need without causing us to overeat in any way. They give us the good without the bad!

Nutrient-rich foods are also custom-tailored to our body systems - including our digestive tract. When chewed properly at a relaxed sit-down meal, our WHFoods can be expected to follow a natural course of digestion and provide the kind of nourishment that we would expect from whole, minimally-processed foods. And our nutrient-rich way of cooking at home can be expected to enhance this outcome. Nutrient-rich foods improve our health not only by lowering our risk of chronic diseases, but also by providing direct support to our many different cell types and complicated physiology. There isn't a single cell in our body (and we have trillions and trillion of individual cells) that doesn't rely on nutrient intake from the food we eat. And there isn't a single system in our body (including our muscles, our bones, our nerves and brain, or our circulatory system) that doesn't require dietary nutrients. So it is by no means a stretch to say that nutrient-rich foods improve our health in more ways than we can count!

Vision for the Future

Our vision for the future is to optimize health through the selection of nutrient-rich health-promoting foods, such as the World's Healthiest Foods, and preparing them the Nutrient-Rich Way to retain their nutritional value. We envision a future based upon enjoyment of whole foods such as those found in the WHFoods Menu - foods that are devoid of added sugars, added salt, processed fats, and other unwanted additives. We envision a future of vibrant health and vitality that is brought about through wise food choices that will maximize our nutritional intake in the context of enjoyable, everyday meals. We envision a world where 96% of the people are no longer nutrient deficient because of the nourishment the World's Healthiest Foods provides!

The WHFoods Menu was especially created to help support every aspect of your health. Foods were selected exclusively from the list of World's Healthiest Foods because they are among the most nutrient-rich foods to help optimize your health. No meal takes longer than 15 minutes to prepare.

Community

For education only, consult a healthcare practitioner for any health problems.

We're Number 1in the World!

35 million visitors per year.
The World's Healthiest Foods website is a leading source of information and expert on the Healthiest Way of Eating and Cooking. It's one of the most visited website on the internet when it comes to "Healthiest Foods" and "Healthiest Recipes" and comes up #1 on a Google search for these phrases.

Over 100 Quick &Easy Recipes

Our Recipe Assistant will help you find the recipe that suits your personal needs. The majority of recipes we offer can be both prepared and cooked in 20 minutes or less from start to finish; a whole meal can be prepared in 30 minutes. A number of them can also be prepared ahead of time and enjoyed later.